Back in May I outlined a number of
changes we here at Zoomshare had planned for
everybody's photo albums including a new mid-size
view of an image, embed codes for sharing the image
on the web and more. One feature we've been
developing, that I left out of that initial list,
was the capturing of photo uploads for promotion on
Zoomshare.com.

Well now after a few weeks of development, testing,
customer feedback and reprioritizing we've pulled a
little switcheroo. The latest
feature for Zoomies
being the promotion of their smiling faces, pets,
group pictures, favorite art and more (naturally,
to be considered, the images must be family
friendly) while we tweak and adjust, based in part
on user feedback, the master list
of new album
features.

How do you get an image considered for
Zoomshare.com? It is as simple as simple can be,
just upload one or more photos to a photo album on
your website and tune into Zoomshare.com for daily
updates.

Why should you care? Well getting an image with a
link to your site on Zoomshare.com, which is
currently averaging just over 3,000 visitors per
day, will help get your site noticed and bring new
visitors to you. It also helps spruce up our home
page, allowing us to showcase our terrific online
community to potential new users.

Given that, I want to take a moment to seriously
reflect a bit on what's been going on since my last
post.

To best reflect I offer samples of two
conversations from the past two weeks involving
myself and a few others touching a bit on the deeper
meanings of life:

sare: back now
pdw: hey I'm back too
peenworm: this is great, everyone's back
pdw: alright!
peenworm: not that i went far, just to the
kitchen, and Dexter is inventing traps for ghosts
sare: i am not sure i was ever truly
"here" till i joined irc chat.
sare: "do i exist outside of irc
channel?", is
my existential question of the day...
pdw: Do I exist inside of irc? Or is
this some
digital bit of a whole me?
pdw: Or, if an IRCbot crashes and no one is
around, does it make a sound?
sare: woah. i'm afraid my brain is too
mushy
to even try to fathom that level of depth.

Or if you’re looking for morality in the physical
world instead of souls in the virtual one:

Brandon: Oh okay. I was just wondering. Hey
if you
were in a 7-11 and there was a fire, do you think
it would be a dishonest act to take a slice of
pizza and eat it?
Me: depends, am I in the 7-11 on July 11th?
Brandon: Ha! Yes.
Me: well then no, its a sign from the
Gods of
Kobal, and I'd take the pizza and run
Brandon: That's what I would do. It is
going
to burn up anyways, yet my parents think it would
be stealing when I asked them.

I have this love/hate relationship with the Sci Fi
channel, I love to hate their commercials.
Nothing drives me crazy more than watching
Battlestar Galatica or Dr. Who - which given its
BBC origin isn't even filmed for commercial breaks
- to be force to watch the 100th ad in the last
hour for the monster movie of the week staring Kevin Sorbo.

In these tough conditions one has to keep their
wits about them and find any value - entertainment
or otherwise - whenever possible. Luckily for me,
I'm not the only one who finds the Sci FI network's
commercial breaks so grating. My two partners in
crime, my wife Katie and my best friend Brandon
have teamed up to create the Sci Fi Poem Project
featuring haikus and other
stylings using the titles from various monster
of the week movies.

Without further ado, I give you the first - of
maybe a series:

A lone "Dragon Fighter", From
a "Dragon Dynasty" with his "Dragon Sword" in a
"Dragon Storm"

"They Are Among Us"this "Deadly Swarm" of "Man
with the Screaming Brain"Shouting "Do or
Die"at thy "Fire Serpant", "Infected" with
"Harpies"These "Fallen Ones" believed the
"Sabertooth" from "Beyond Loch Ness"Soon after
battle, "Pumpkin head vs. Demonic Toys" in which
this "Savage Planet" was changed A new "Epoch
Evolution" begun as "Skeleton Man" and "Painkiller
Jane" begat "SS DoomTrooper" This "Headless
Horseman" on "Raptor Island" in peace, no more the
"Pumpkinhead: Blood Fued"

Worried you don't have enough time to find Dad the
perfect gift for Father's Day? Not sure if he needs
a new hammer from the near by hardware store or an
iPod from the local electronic store?

While Father's Day is Sunday, June 15, less than
two weeks away, the fine folks at Amazon wish to
remind you that there is still plenty of time to
pick up a cool gift for Dad online. Better yet, you can
shop their hardware
store for the perfect hammer or their electronic
store for that iPod, not to mention ties and DVDs,
watches, games, and big
TVs -- Amazon has what Dad
wants (and what he needs).

Deep within the Zoomshare office resides a
collection of servers running a duplicate copy of
our application for development and testing. Within
this damp lab the mad hacker/programmers, including
yours truly, slave over every line of code, looking
to improve performance and reliability.

About once a week a service bell rings summoning us
from our dungeon to "The Meeting Place" where that
week's directive is read to all within ear shot.
For the past few weeks the directive has repeated,
exactly the same, like a drum beat, over and over
"Improve Photo Albums, Improve Photo Albums". Then
with little warning we are pushed back down the
stairs to our lab, deprived of sunlight and all but
bread and water, until one day at the Sacred
Council of Fogg the Stone of Wine declares "It is
done!"

Eh, ok, maybe not quite like that. Yet, we do
indeed work everyday on improving Zoomshare and indeed for the past
few weeks within our lab environment we have been
focusing on enchantments to photo albums and soon
those changes will be seeing the light of day. That
of course brings us to the big question: What in
Photo Albums will be changing?

Album Changes: NavigationFirst and foremost the biggest change to
Zoomshare sites for visitors will be a new
navigation scheme, designed to allow a visitor to
easily move between individual images and removal
of the awkward "pop-up window".

At first, navigating images within album looks the
same; first a list of albums in alphabetical order,
followed by a collection of thumbnail images
representing the various sorted images within an album.

Thumbnail View

However, everything changes after the next mouse
click. Previously when a visitor clicked on a
thumbnail image a pop-up window would open with a
full-size view of the image. Within the upcoming
change upon mouse click the thumbnail view will
disappear and be replaced with a new "mid-size"
view of the image.

To view a full or originally uploaded size, a
simple mouse clink on the mid-size image will do
the trick. However instead of a pop-up window,
which most web browsers restrict these days, a "lightbox" effect is in place in
which the image opens in a "modal dialog box". Simply put
everything within the browser window is "grayed out" to draw focus to the
image "on top of" everything else.

Full-size View

Album Changes: Embed CodesWith the addition of the mid-size view to
photo albums another element the "Share" or "embed
codes" have been added alongside each image to
enable sharing of your images among visitors to
your site and the web in general. Depending on the
size of the image each image will either have a
collection of Small & Original or Small, Medium and
Large code for embedding the image into a web page
or bulletin board.

In addition each image will include a URL to use in
instant messages or emails as well as the embed
code for the Zoomshare Flipbook Widget containing
the whole album in which the individual image is a
part of.

Use of these embed codes is similar to other codes
found on the web today; the visitor simply uses
their ever handy copy and paste abilities to select
and copy the embed code they wish to use, then
paste that code into the desired location as needed.

Selecting Share Code for Embedding

Album Changes: ConsoleDon't want your images to be "shareable" by
your site visitors? No problem, within console a
new album setting allows a Zoomshare user to
control which, if any, albums are "shareable". By
default all albums are, so if you wish to limit
which albums provide share information one simply
needs to disable the feature as desired.

Console Disable/Enable Share Information

Even if a Zoomshare user wishes to disable
Share information for the outside world,
within console the embed codes for any image can
still be found for use within Zoomshare pages or
elsewhere.

To access this new Share information within console
two new features have been added to the Add &
Sort Photos section of the photo album console.
A "Share" link above each new image provides for
that image's embed codes when desired. Simply click
on the Share link to reveal the necessary
information.

In addition to the Share link, the embed
codes for each image are also provided in the
Info section of each image, just in case.

Share Information within Console

Back to the Pit of DespairAs with all change it will take a little bit
of time for the dust to settle. If anything seems
amiss or if you have a suggestion, comment or
feedback, please do send them our way at: customerservice
at zoomshare dot com. But with any luck the
Shared Wizards of Zoom will declare "It is Good."